The Channel Wire

September 30, 2008

After months and months of rumors, Adobe has finally confirmed that that it is developing Flash for Apple's iPhone. Speaking at the Flash On The Beach conference in Brighton England, Paul Betlem, senior director of engineering at Adobe Systems, confirmed that Adobe is working on getting their product onto the iPhone.

When posed a direct question from the audience, Betlem publically confirmed that Adobe is working on getting the Flash Player onto Apple's iPhone, Flash Magazine reports. The confirmation finally comes after countless rumors that the company was, in fact, making an iPhone play.

The rumors got started in earnest in March of this year after Adobe's Q1 earnings report conference call. On the call, Shantanu Narayan, CEO of Adobe, addressed putting Flash on mobile devices. After talking about Microsoft's adoption of Flash on its Window's Mobile devices, Narayan directly address the iPhone.

"[S]o we're also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone and we'll work with Apple," Narayan said on the call. "We've evaluated the SDK we can now start to develop the Flash Player ourselves. And, we think it benefits our joint customers so we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device."

That, according to Mike Downey on his Adobe blog, was the quote that launched a thousand rumors. Shortly after the call, Adobe issued its own official statement.

"Adobe has evaluated the iPhone SDK and can now start to develop a way to bring Flash Player to the iPhone. However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits Apple and Adobe's millions of joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device," said the company in a release.

Of course, Adobe, like all other potential iPhone app developers, will have to submit their offering to Apple for ultimate approval.

And a lot of developers have found that Apple hasn't exactly been beneficent with its approvals. However, it seems that such an important roll out like Flash on the iPhone would be approved quickly.

Betlem, believes that the same might be true for Adobe, noting that Flash is a closed application and that the ball will be in Apple's court, Flash Magazine reports.